The nation is in chaos. A White House aide rushes to wake the president in the middle of the night. Members of Congress have convened at the Capitol for a rare Sunday night session to decide what should be done. News stations provide round the clock coverage of this monumental event. Have the terrorists hit us again? Is it some kind of deadly plague? Aliens, perhaps?
No, this was the scene a week and a half ago when our humble president and his loyal brigade of opportunists-in-shining-armor decided to take it upon themselves to ignore the previous rulings of 19 judges and prolong the life of a Florida woman who has been in a vegetative state for 15 years. How heroic.
The Schiavo case was, of course, nothing less than tragic for her family. But when the religious crusaders in the government decided to bring the issue to the forefront of the national agenda, it became apparent that a similarly great tragedy has befallen our country. I don’t doubt that the fundamentalists who paraded the Terri Schiavo case in front of the cameras truly believed that they were morally right to advocate for keeping her alive. I disagree with their actions, although I respect their beliefs. The problem is that we trusted Congress and the president to focus on the most important issues of the day, like maintaining our political system and defending the country, and their priorities are skewed to the point of absurdity.
On the day that members of Congress scrambled back to Washington to initiate a desperate crusade to keep Terri Schiavo alive, about 45 million uninsured Americans were left to worry about how they would pay for medical care if they ever got sick. How many of them were unable to see a doctor during the course of the Schaivo episode because their government didn’t feel morally obligated to pay for their treatment?
It may be true that, in some situations, politicians are correct in taking drastic measures to act on the case of a single, high-profile individual. But I bet I can think of someone who deserved more of their attention than Terri Schaivo did. Remember Osama bin Laden? He’s that tall guy with the beard. You know, the one who killed about 3,000 Americans in a single day. Apparently, we let him escape during the battle at Tora Bora, and he’s camping out somewhere in the mountains, trying to think of ways to kill even more of us.
We’ve all listened to their meticulous arguments about how important it was to keep Terri Schaivo alive, but when was the last time you heard Tom Delay or even President Bush give a detailed speech to update and lay out our strategy to find bin Laden? The Sept. 11 attacks occurred during the second week of my first year at Georgetown. If someone had told me then that bin Laden would still be hiding out a month and a half before my graduation day, I probably would have responded by asking how many Bush administration officials had resigned before the end of the President’s first term and which Democrat had been elected to replace him.
The problem is that the Republican leaders latch onto issues they know will get them airtime and will exploit people’s emotions, even when they contradict their supposedly deeply-held convictions. Calling them hypocritical would be a monumental understatement.
Tom Delay, for instance, has spent a career preaching the necessity of maintaining a culture of life yet voted “no” on replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment. He rails about morality but was reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee three times last year. He demands states’ rights and preaches about the sanctity of marriage but did everything in his power to overrule the state of Florida and Terri Schiavo’s husband. Delay saved what was perhaps the most egregious of his massive arsenal of disgusting acts a week and a half ago, when he lambasted House Democrats for having “cost Mrs. Schiavo two meals already today.” Harsh words, especially when considering that in 1998, Delay agreed to end life support for his ailing, incurably ill father. It is depressing yet true that the issues most crucial to the future of the country-capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, providing affordable health care, coming to terms with the worldwide AIDS crisis, and curbing global warming-are the ones that the Republican leadership rarely addresses. They’d much rather exploit divisive issues that pander to the personal, moral convictions of their voting base, which they credit for leading them to victory in the last election. Hypocritical, venom-spewing factories of intolerance like Tom Delay think that their latest win has made them invincible.
But it looks like they’ve finally gone too far. A CBS News poll showed that 82 percent of Americans thought that Congress should not have gotten involved in the Schiavo affair. It’s pretty tough to get 82 percent of Americans to agree on anything, let alone something as complex as this case. Maybe the Democrats were right to remain largely silent on this issue and let the sleaziness of guys like Delay manifest itself to everyone. Now the trick will be to avoid stooping to their level.
